Because Twitter Hates You, That’s Why

A few have remarked that the Heathen Twitter feed is no longer showing up on the right-hand side of the page. This is because, near as I can tell, Twitter hates us. Remember, we’re not their customers; we’re their products. They’ve changed (read: broken) their old APIs, and nothing I try seems to work. This is by design.

Even, I should note, their much-ballyhooed new embedded timeline bullshit. Which would be irrelevant, since that option forces compliance with their bizarre display rules, which mandate the inclusion of the goddamn avatar. I just want the fucking tweets.

Twitter is doing this because they want absolute control over the Twitter experience so they can force you to look at ads, like Facebook. Which is one reason I spend very, very little time on Facebook. Allowing simple, easy, unauthenticated syndication of a user’s public timeline is antithetical to this, even though you can just go to my Twitter page and see all my activity in a browser without any authentication or tokens or whatever.

So, yeah, this isn’t likely to get fixed.

Think about this before you buy another book from the Kindle Store

Rights mavens will point out over and over that you don’t really own anything on your Kindle, but it’s easy to dismiss as the ravings of paranoids.

Until it happens to someone. Amazon is refusing to explain why it’s closed this woman’s account, wiped her Kindle, and kicked her to the curb. After several questions, the final word from Amazon? “We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.”

Lots, and lots and lots of people should hear about this. This is what could have happened with music, too, if MP3 hadn’t become the default. Movies and video are locked up, too, but it’s easy to transcode a DVD and store it as something that’ll play widely, so there’s an “out” there, too. By far the worse rights management regime, though, is in books. And Amazon holds the keys.

BoingBoing has more.

On Ryan’s complaints re: the size of our Navy under Obama

Apparently, during his debate with Biden, Ryan whined that our Navy is now smaller than at any point since before World War I.

I have no idea whether that’s true or not, but let’s assume it is. (Given the aforementioned tactics of the GOP, this is clearly not a safe assumption, but go with it.)

What do we need a Navy for today? What is its job? Naval battles as decisive military engagements are basically a thing of the past. Countries don’t maintain ships of the line anymore. At this point no Navy in the world has an active battleship. Ever since Midway, the name of the game has been force projection and air power, and that means carriers.

During the Cold War, we sort of pretended we needed a big Navy, but really it was already the carriers (and submarines) that mattered the most. And that’s still true. And here’s the other part: You don’t need very many of either to have a decisive advantage over pretty much everybody else, and I’d say we have that pretty well in hand.

Of the ten nations that have carriers, seven of them have only one (and China’s isn’t usable). We, on the other hand, have twenty, eleven of which are giant-ass supercarriers, with more (of the Ford class) coming.

One thing you discover if you start reading about American naval power and carriers is that sources disagree on what counts as a carrier. The GlobalSecurity graphic I linked above counts basically all flattop vessels to arrive at 21, but most other sources just count the 11 supercarriers. Even if we go with that figure, though, the comparisons to the rest of the world are just as amazing: nobody else has more than 2. Our navy, all by itself, far exceeds the naval power of the rest of the nations of the world put together.

I’m probably pretty on board with us having dramatic, overwhelming, shock-and-awe level force advantages over any possible antagonist, but it seems kinda unlikely that we really need to maintain this kind of margin. We could drop by 30% and still have that, for example.

Romney’s Fuzzy Math and the Right’s Issues with Truth

By now you’ve seen the clever DNC site RomneyTaxPlan.com (if you haven’t, check it out). It’s a pithy bit of campaigning, and it’s completely fair to tweak the candidate for failing to provide any specifics for his very pie-in-the-sky plan. There’s a reason he won’t provide any numbers, and that’s because they don’t add up. At all.

What’s more fun, though, is to have someone actually try to run the numbers; they just don’t work. There’s no way his stated goals can be met without raising taxes on the middle class. What’s more, he must know this to the be case, and just figures nobody will call him on it, and that folks will give him a pass on this cornerstone of his campaign should he make it to the White House.

What’s amazing to me is the degree to which the GOP sticks to this fact-free script. Actually, “amazing” is the wrong word; it’s been clear since the mid 1990s that the modern GOP cares more about winning than governing, and will do or say anything they think they can get away with if it hurts their opponents, or helps them.

The press has been seriously complicit in this by refusing to call out blatant falsehoods when these nincompoops try to trot them out, preferring instead to present both sides of any given issue as equally legitimate, even on questions of settled science.

Fortunately, there’s at least a little evidence that some members of the press are pushing back, at least a little, which (if nothing else) forces the liars to double down explicitly, on the record, for later ridicule. Hey, it’s something.

Fubawl.

Right, so, a few notes from yesterday:

  1. I really, really thought the Longhorns would give Oklahoma more of a run for their money than this. Good Christ, what a whoopin’.

  2. Welcome to the SEC, bitches. Mizzou drops to 3-4, and remains winless in SEC play. Miss the Big 12 yet, boys?

  3. Also winless in conference? Auburn, who dropped to Ole Miss. The Rebels’ last SEC victory was in 2010. This was a game where I really kinda wanted both to lose — Rebel losses make all the right people sad in my home state, though with a little collateral damage — but I’m more than happy with this outcome. The AU boosters treated a perfectly good coach poorly, and while Chiz did get them a crystal football, it’s coming with a mighty big hangover. And that hangover is only gonna get bigger, because Chiz negotiated one hell of a buyout clause so they can’t afford to fire him yet.

  4. Speaking of that perfectly good coach, it turns out West Virginia is exactly who we thought they were when they needed 70 points to outrun powerhouse BAYLOR a week or two ago. Tuberville’s Texas Tech smacked ’em good (49 to 14, in public and in front of their mamas), and now we all know how tough the Big 12 isn’t.

  5. C’mon, Steve, can’t you do one thing right here? Now the sports press is all about how LSU is “back,” but brother, that didn’t look like “back” to me. Miles continues to win ugly, and it seems to me that Saban is likely to come to Death Valley loaded for bear.

  6. Oh, A&M, you really did try to lose this one, didn’t you? 59 to 57 is an embarrassing win when you’re playing out of conference, Aggs.

  7. Stat of the day: Big-time games saw not one but TWO defensive two point conversions. First Texas blocked a PAT attempt by Oklahoma and ran it back for two, and then the Aggies did the same thing vs. Louisiana Tech. This will be a trivia answer someday.

  8. Finally, fuck you, Irish.

At the end of the day, here’s the new top ten:

  1. Alabama (unanimous)
  2. Oregon
  3. Florida (now sitting pretty as the only undefeated team in the SEC east)
  4. K State
  5. Irish
  6. LSU (highest 1-loss team)
  7. Ohio State (irrelevant due to sanctions)
  8. Oregon State
  9. South Carolina
  10. Oklahoma

Florida and South Carolina play next week. Oklahoma plays the Irish in two weeks, but has already lost to K State. Oregon and Oregon State will obviously play in the Civil War game (11/24).

And Alabama? We play LSU on November 3.

Snapshot: Five Years Ago

Alabama Gaga Over Overrated Saban” is completely hilarious in retrospect.

Some bits:

The citizens of Alabama never have been rational when it comes to college football, but the state has gone absolutely Lindsey Lohan over the arrival of Saban from his forgettable stint with the Miami Dolphins. How else to explain an overflow crowd of more than 92,000 showing up for the Crimson Tide’s spring game this year? Even by Alabama standards, that’s nuts.

The Crimson Tide went 6-7 last season and has not won a national championship in 15 years. Yet a number of Alabama fans truly expect Saban to have a 10-victory team this season and be in the BCS title game within three years. And those are the rational fans.

There is no need for Tide fans to roll out the red carpet for Saban, because in their mind, he walks several feet off the ground anyway. Upon his initial arrival in Tuscaloosa, one exuberant woman at the airport grabbed Saban around the neck and kissed his cheek. Children are being told stories about the wonderful Saint Nick that have nothing to do with Christmas.

[…]

The question is, why are Alabama fans so enamored with Saban? He is certainly a very good coach, with a national championship ring to prove it. Tuberville can’t say the same (although he did lead Auburn to a perfect 13-0 record in 2004).

But Saban’s arrival is being treated in these parts like the second-coming of Paul “Bear” Bryant. Or at least Gene Stallings. You would think from the reaction that Alabama had landed one of the two or three best college coaches in the nation, a perception that simply is not backed up by the numbers.

[…]

The fact is, Saban has won more than nine games in a season only twice. His record during his first four seasons at Michigan State was 25-22-1. He went 8-5 during his third season at LSU. It is hard to imagine Alabama fans who are thinking national championship by year No. 3 being happy with 8-5.

[…]

Yes, Saban has won a national championship, but a number of coaches have a single title to their credit. Winning multiple championships is a rarity, especially these days. Despite his years of national success while at Florida, Spurrier managed only one title. Lou Holtz, Vince Dooley and John Robinson are among the coaching greats who were one-and-done when it came to national championships. The legendary Bo Schembechler never won a title, and Frank Beamer is still without one.

Since the beginning of the BCS in 1998, the only coaches to pick up a second championship are Bobby Bowden (who won his first in 1993) and Carroll (who shared the title with Saban’s LSU team in 2003 and then won it outright in 2004).

What this means is if Saban ends up with multiple championship rings, he will go down as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport. And to this point, there is nothing in his record to indicate that he will reach such lofty heights.

Not to be a dick, but it does seem worthwhile to point out that while Saban’s Tide did start a little slow in his first season (2007, when they went a disappointing 7-6), by 2008 he was on fire (12-2, and the team’s first number one regular season ranking since 1980).

In 2009 — the “year No. 3” referenced by the author above — he delivered. 2010 was a bit of an off year (10-3, ending with a smackdown of Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl), but he returned to form in last year with another title.

So there’s that.

Your Modern Republican Party

All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory … all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell..”

As Tomorrow notes, this man sits on a key congressional science advisory committee. He is also a medical doctor.

He has since tried to distance himself from the remarks, claiming they were “off the record,” which to me sounds like “I didn’t think anyone would hear about them.” If he wants to disavow them, let him do so clearly and unequivocally.

This guy gets better and better: Since he’s clearly of the raving-nutbird-looney wing of fundamentalism, it should of course surprise you not at all that he’s been married four times.

(That sigh? Me being relieved this chucklehead isn’t from Texas.)

Dept. of Things That Could Not Be More Awesome

So (pun intended) Peter Gabriel played the Hollywood Bowl the other night, doing the entirety of the record I made a joke about at the beginning of this sentence.

As you may recall, especially if you’re about my age, that album includes a song from a particularly iconic scene in late-eighties cinema.

With the scene now set, we take you now to the Hollywood Bowl, 2 nights ago, and 23 years after Lloyd and Diane.

(PS: Note also that, apparently, Gabriel himself shared this fan-shot footage on his official Facebook, which is kind of rad all on its own.)

(Also, the video was shot was a consumer-grade camera actually intended for still photography. Miracles and wonders, people.)

I’m not surprised a GOP candidate would do this. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.

A Maine Republican running for State Senate is attacking her opponent for playing World of Warcrat, and includes in the attacks in-game quotes taken out of context, forum posts, and weird accusations based on her in-game class and role.

Oh, Republicans. I keep thinking you’re done, and you keep finding even more impressive ways to be stupid.

Fortunately, the Democratic candidate responded very, very well:

I think it’s weird that I’m being targeted for playing online games. Apparently I’m in good company since there are 183 million other Americans who also enjoy online games. What’s next? Will I be ostracized for playing Angry Birds or Words with Friends? If so, guilty as charged!

What’s really weird is that the Republicans are going after my hobbies instead of talking about their record while they’ve been running Augusta for the last two years. Instead of talking about what they’re doing for Maine people, they’re making fun of me for playing video games. Did you know that more people over the age of 50 play video games than under the age of 18? As a gamer, I’m in good company with folks like Jodie Foster, Vin Diesel, Mike Myers, and Robin Williams. Maybe it’s the Republican Party that is out of touch.

Updated: 2nd link fixed.

HEADZ.

In accordance with tradition, the additional header graphics have the following names:

  • “Smaller balls than on the real ones”
  • “Three”
  • “Etched ‘Cause You Caint Brand Glass”
  • “Mmmmm”
  • “Two”
  • “One”
  • “No Children Were Harmed With These Fireworks”
  • “Again?”
  • “QB1 with Shoes”
  • “Senator Wigginsworth”
  • “AFP”
  • “Pretty much all the nieces take pretty good pics”
  • “Dinner”

The old set are still in the mix, too. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

Oh, Windows. Will you never stop being stupid and weird?

I just realized something kind of breathtaking in its awesome boneheadedness.

The “Desktop” folder in Windows has always been a troublespot for them, conceptually. They do their level best to convince you that the Desktop is actually the “top” of your whole computing tree, but that’s materially not true; actually, the “desktop” is just a folder in your user directory. Drill far into down, and you’ll find that the “desktop” Windows Explorer shows you at the top will contain, inside a nest of other folders, itself.

Yeah, turtles all the way down. I’m sure that’s NEVER confused anyone.

Well anyway, I work off the desktop, mostly, in my Windows VM. I drop working files there, so I interact with it quite often. I keep little in the VM long-term, so I don’t want things getting filed away in My Documents or whatever where out of sight becomes out of mind.

It turns out that if you drill down to the desktop normally — usually, by choosing “Computer” and then “C:” and then “users”, then your username, and then “desktop” — you see pretty much the correct contents:

Screen Shot 2012 10 04 at 6 06 56 PM

But if you make the Desktop folder a favorite by dragging it to the navigation bar in Windows Explorer, it apparently becomes the MAGIC DESKTOP, and Microsoft helpfully adds a bunch of other clutter:

Screen Shot 2012 10 04 at 6 07 14 PM

Look! Extra shit in one view that’s missing in the other — in what should be exactly the same view. Nice.

There does not, by the way, appear to be a way to:

a. Remove these stupid extra links; or
b. Create a “favorite” link to my desktop folder that doesn’t include them.

And they wonder why people hate Windows.

There’s a thing in computing called “the principle of least surprise.” It’s the idea that, when you’re building a system, you don’t want to shock the user with unexpected behavior. This is an excellent example of a violation of that rule, and of the kind of bullshit that happens when you design by committee.

Dept. of Pictures That Should Make You Smile

This one:

Screen Shot 2012 10 04 at 5 03 04 PM

from here.

For the record, ages then and now, from left to right:

  • Cary Elwes: 49 now, 24 then
  • Robin Wright: 46 now, 21 then
  • Mandy Patinkin: 59 now, 35 then
  • Chris Sarandon: 70 now, 45 then
  • Wallace Shawn: 68 now, 43 then
  • Carol Kane: 60 now, 35 then
  • Billy Crystal: 64 now, 39 then

Not pictured:

  • Chris Guest: 64 now, 39 then. Now’s as good a time as any to remind you that Guest is a hereditary peer known more completely as Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden Guest.
  • Fred Savage: 36 now, 11 then.

Two others are, of course, dead. Peter Falk died last June at 83. He was 59 when the film was made. Andre Roussimoff died 19 years ago at 46, only a few years after the film was made.

In the “somewhat distressing” category: of the main cast, only Sarandon and Shawn were older than I am now.

Related: I wondered if Chris Sarandon and Eric Roberts should team up in some kind of “creepy (ex)relative of awesome leading lady” project, but it turns out they did do a movie together in 2000. It appears, however, to have garnered only mixed reviews despite the presence of Cary Elwes.

The problem is that many Americans will dismiss this because Sanders is a quasi-socialist

This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem. But the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars – unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That’s wrong.

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator (I-VT), Senate Budget Committee, Nov. 18, 2011.

Inside the Romney Office

This is pretty flabbergasting. Seriously.

“What’s killing us is all these entitlements, we’ve got to get rid of all of them. All this welfare, food stamps, Medicare, and then big government health care on top of it, it’s all just too much! When do we say enough is enough?”

What do you mean, exactly, I ask him. You say people are suffering under Obama, don’t they need some help?

“No. No more help, enough is enough. People have to pick themselves up, take some responsibility. Why should we be paying for people’s mistakes and bad choices? All these illegitimate families just adding to the population, making all these bad decisions, then asking us to pay for it? It’s time to cut them off.”

I ask for some clarification: what do you mean, just starve them out? What if people can’t find work? Let them starve?

“Look, there’s always something you can do. You telling me people can’t make a choice for a better life? We have to help all of them? No. I’ll tell you what really need to do with these illegitimate families on welfare—give all the kids up for adoption and execute the parents.”

Attention: Dudes My Age

The nearly-exhaustive Bionic Wiki might well eat your afternoon if you ever had one of these or one of these. The level of attention to detail — plot summaries! discussions of contradictions! chronologies! — is astonishing.

Incidentally, the list of toys hilariously confirms my recent recollection of the fundamentally sexist divide between Six Million Dollar Man toys and counterparts created for The Bionic Woman. In lieu of the Command Center, for example, Ms Sommers had to make do with a Bionic Beauty Salon.

Via this excellent Mefi post.

Dept. of Shocking Disappointments, or, Olympus Hates You

This new camera I picked up has made me pretty happy. I’m sure I’m leaving a little on the table vs. a DSLR, but the size more than makes up for it.

But that doesn’t mean I’m entirely pleased, and here’s why: Every piece of documentation for the Olympus refers to it as having a USB port. It ships with a cable that looks like USB, too, and sports two ports that look, at first glance, like one is probably micro- or mini-USB.

I happened to use the supplied cable the first couple times I downloaded pix, so I didn’t actually notice that there was anything weird until this weekend.

When I was out of town.

I hadn’t bothered to take the actual Olympus cable with me because, as a pretty seasoned traveller, I keep a couple spares in my “travel kit” that live in my bag all the time.

It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that I realized I had a problem. The ports on the Olympus may technically be a variant of USB and not just some goofball “fuck you port” from Olympus, but the end result is the same: you can’t buy a cable for this camera at Best Buy or Target. You have to use the fancy CB-USB6 cable.

This sin is compounded by the fact that Oly seriously downplays the incompatibility of the supplied faux-USB cable; it’s just called a “USB cable” in all documentation, and sports a normal USB tip on the computer end. Only DEEP in the manual (supplied only on PDF) does it state that users should only use the supplied cable. Cute.

Here’s the news, Olympus: People in 2012 have an expectation of easy connectivity. Pretty much everything has a normal USB port on it now. That’s how shit should work. The era of needing to keep up with dozens of different cables for one’s devices is past, and thank God for it. Using this connector today is complete bullshit, and represents a giant fucking step backwards. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

It also makes me a whole lot less excited about my new camera. I feel a little duped, to be honest. So, you know, fuck you for that, too.

Posted in Pix